text: Hofmann discovered his love for physics at the Max Planck High School in Groß-Umstadt, Germany, where he graduated in 1963. He studied physics at the Technical University in Darmstadt (Diploma, 1969, and thesis at the Institute of Nuclear Physics  with Egbert Kankeleit and Karl Wien, 1974). From 1974 to 1989 he was responsible for the detection and identification of nuclei produced in heavy ion reactions at the velocity separator SHIP (Separator for Heavy Ion reaction Products) at the GSI Helmholtz Centre for Heavy Ion Research. He was working in the Department Nuclear Chemistry II headed by Peter Armbruster. From 1989 he was leading, after Gottfried Münzenberg, the experiments for the synthesis of new elements. From 1998 he was Honorary Professor at the Goethe-Universität in Frankfurt.
  He was the leading scientist with the discovery experiments of the chemical elements darmstadtium (Ds, atomic number 110),  roentgenium (Rg, 111) and copernicium (Cn, 112). He made substantial contributions to the discovery experiments of the elements bohrium (Bh, 107), hassium (Hs, 108)  and meitnerium (Mt, 109). He participated in the discovery of the element flerovium (Fl, 114) at the Flerov Laboratory of Nuclear Reactions (FLNR) in Dubna, Russia, and his research group confirmed data measured on the synthesis of the elements flerovium and livermorium (Lv, 116) at FLNR. He identified many new isotopes located at the proton drip-line, among those the isotope Lu, the first case of radioactive emission of protons from the ground-state of a nucleus. His speciality was nuclear spectroscopy and heavy ion reactions.